SmallBusinessNewz

Recently, he American Small Business League (ASBL) won its fourth federal lawsuit against the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and it is making sure that everyone knows about it.

The ASBL is trying to call the SBA's moves before they make them, which should make it interesting to see if they happen as the ASBL paints them.

The ASBL believes that the SBA will initiate a "damage control" campaign, to draw media attention away from potentially incriminating documents that the ASBL believes will reveal that billions of dollars in contracts were awarded to Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries rather than small businesses, which should have received them.

The SBA was ordered to comply with the ASBL's Freedom of Information Act request within 2 weeks from May 19th, and this request asks specifically for all of the names of firms that received federal small business contracts in 2005 and 2006.

     "This information will be very damaging to the credibility of SBA Administrator Steven Preston and the Bush Administration," says Lloyd Chapman, President of the ASBL. "Why else would they have gone to federal court to withhold what should be harmless figures? I believe this data will prove that the Bush Administration has lied to Congress and the public since 2001 and intentionally diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 corporations."

"I think they are going to use every trick in the book to withhold this data and divert media attention from the damaging nature of this information," added Chapman. "I wouldn't be surprised if they appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court."

Strong words from the ASBL. Not that the bitterness between the two organizations is anything new. For earlier stories on their conflicts, go here.

The ASBL says that since 2002, the SBA has been blaming "computer glitches" and "miscoding" for inflated numbers involving federal contracts and Fortune 500 firms. They suspect that they will edit the numbers in the forthcoming documents to reduce their guilty appearance, and if busted, chalk it up to "computer glitches" yet again.